Instructor Bios
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Lila Faria (she/her)
Lila Faria is a Seattle-based blues dance instructor and organizer with over a decade of experience dancing across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She began her movement training as an ice skater in 2004, but transitioned to blues dancing in 2015. Her work incorporates elements from her bachelor's degree in alternative education (NYU) as well as from her time working with Montessori schools, non-violent communication, CMX community building, positive discipline and more. Through her pedagogy, she hopes to provide her students with informative dance history while simultaneously empowering them to be their true, authentic selves.
Email: lila.f.faria@gmail.com
Photo credit: Rachel Bliven Art and Design
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Robin Chow (he/him)
Being a dancer who started later in life, and owing much to the discovery a hip hop tutorial video at the back of a You Got Served DVD, Robin truly believes that dance is inside every one of us. Whether it's a fully realized passion, or a whisper of curiosity, he feels that dance should always be available to our selves, whatever one's dance experience or familiarity.
His dance repertoire is based on solo movement learned from a studio hip hop background, with the journey into social dancing starting with lindy hop and now encompassing balboa and fusion. And since his introduction to blues dancing in 2018, he has become a passionate practitioner and advocate of the form, and is dedicated to a continued journey of learning and sharing of blues dance and culture.
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Amanda Wanner (she/her)
Amanda began dancing in her hometown of Chicago in 2004. After a journey, she has resided in Seattle since 2008 and supported the Blues community in the PNW, and beyond, for many years.
Amanda loves finding new ways to challenge her movement. After having a baby in 2013, she slowly transitioned her pursuit of dance to martial arts and family bicycling, by 2016. In 2022, she found her way back to dance, becoming the director of Blues Underground, returning to her role as a Blues educator, and jumping head first into 4 new dances.
Through her classes, Amanda focuses on grounding in pulse & blues aesthetic, culture, play, and social connection. She aims to lift up dancers by utilizing movement as a tool they can exercise to be fully themselves in their expression of Blues dance, while calling dancers in to being outside their comfort zone.
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Dillon Arevalo (hi/him)
Dillon has been partner dancing since 2007, when his friends bribed him to attend Swing dance classes with cookies, and has been teaching since 2009. He started dancing Blues in 2010 as a way to better understand connection and closeness within partner dance. He fell in love with the way two partners in a Blues dance can feel like a single form but still retain so much individual agency and expression. As a teacher, Dillon tries to understand dance both from a cultural and historical lens and as a means of artistic co-creation and connection. His chief joys in teaching are discussing and experiencing dance theory and helping others find what they love about dance.
Photo credit: Devon Rowland Photography